Canyon museum shows Texas impressionism

"Nasturtiums (Poppies and Nasturtiums)" by Lucien Abrams will highlight a new exhibition opening Saturday at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. "Texas Impressionism: Branding with Brushstroke and Color, 1885-1935" runs through Sept. 3 in Canyon before traveling across the state.

It was hardly a given that artists in Texas would be drawn into the impressionist movement.

At the height of the movement in the late 1800s, parts of the state were still very much in the wild, wild west.

“Impressionism started in France at a time when Texas was not quite as settled as the rest of the world,” said Michael Grauer, associate director for curatorial affairs and curator of art at Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon.

“The Battle of Adobe Walls happened two months after the first impressionism show in Paris.”

But the art movement’s popularity could not be denied, spreading to the United States and into Texas.

Now, the Lone Star State’s contribution to the movement will be explored in a major new PPHM exhibition, “Texas Impressionism: Branding with Brushstroke and Color, 1885-1935,” opening Saturday in the Foran Gallery.

The show runs through Sept. 3 before traveling to four other museums across the state, the largest such show PPHM has opened in about 20 years, Grauer said.

It will travel to Abilene, Tyler, San Antonio and Beaumont over the span of almost two years.

“The exhibit is on a subject that all people love. Impressionist art consistently ranks as the favorite art style of people everywhere,” said PPHM Executive Director Guy C. Vanderpool. “People across the state will see some of the true gems of the museum’s collection, as well as very seldom seen paintings from private collections and other museums across the state.”

Early Texas artists are best known for work in the regionalist school — think Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” or, in Texas, Otis M. Dozier and others known as The Dallas Nine.

“But before they took the reins, there was impressionism,” Grauer said.

Artists such as Frank Reaugh, Emma Richardson Cherry, Julian Onderdonk and Lucien Abrams came from Texas, though they may have painted around the world.

Abrams, for instance, lived in the American center of impressionism — Old Lyme, Conn. — but he never forgot his Texas roots, frequently sending works back home to exhibit. Two of Abrams’ granddaughters will attend an opening reception at 5:30 p.m. Friday.

Cherry, who painted under the name E. Richardson, alternated between living in France and in Houston.

“She was dragging these ideas back to Houston and forcefeeding them to Texas,” Grauer said.

Impressionism first made its mark in Texas in 1896 at the Texas Coast Fair in Dickinson.

“Nobody was quite sure what it was,” Grauer said.

The style is marked by “pure, prismatic colors” that were generally applied with short brush strokes, according to art expert William H. Gerdts, whose 1984 book “American Impressionism” is the standard text on the topic in the art world and who wrote the introduction for the PPHM exhibition’s catalog.

“Michael Grauer has quite rightly and understandably taken, instead, a broad view, so that artists who were effected by impressionism, stylistically or ideologically but who yet held to more traditional, sometimes well-worn principles could also find their place in this survey, which is not so much about Texas impressionists as it is about ‘Texas Impressionism,’” Gerdts wrote.

“We want people to take a look and see that impressionism spread around the world,” Grauer said. “It wasn’t just exclusively a French movement.

“It’s impressionism with a little salsa. It’s got a little flavor, a little spice. Instead of a poppy field, we might have a prickly pear.”